Databases provide a convenient means of storing vast amounts of information, allowing the information to be sorted, searched, viewed, and manipulated according to the needs of the user(s). Digital databases are managed using database management systems. A database management system (DBMS) consists of software that operates databases, allowing data creation, maintenance, search capabilities, and other access. A relational database management system (RDBMS) is a DBMS that is based on the relational model which adds the additional condition that the system supports a tabular structure for the data, with enforced relationships between the tables.
Various types of data may be stored in a database, including string data, numeric data, and dates. There are times when a user needs to store an image in a database. Today, an image is stored in database tables as a BLOB (Binary Large Object) field or as a link to an external file. In either case, the image can be queried based on the image file name and not the image contents. Furthermore, images stored as external file links cannot be processed using RDBMS capabilities and multiple images are difficult to maintain. A need exists for directly and efficiently storing an image so that it can be queried similar to a regular text field.